An appeal to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Rome, December 26, 2010. On Christmas Day the Egyptian border police arrested 16 Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees in two separate operations.

The refugees were stopped as they attempted to cross the border to the State of Israel. We are unaware at the present if among those arrested are any of the 250 immigrants who have been held for over a month by Abu Khaled's traffickers. EveryOne Group and Agenzia Habeshia immediately sent an urgent appeal to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, and at the same time to the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt, requesting that the immigrants be allowed to apply to the UN Agency for international humanitarian protection or asylum. EveryOne and Habeshia claim that the refugees should be handed over to the Commissioner and not imprisoned, pending a possible deportation to countries where a humanitarian crisis is underway. Finally, the NGOs are calling for intervention from the European Parliament to establish a plan for the resettlement of refugees in EU Member States.